In the last few years, the development of high quality multimedia and the availability of powerful computing platforms ability to handle video and audio in real-time has increased the interest in video and audio applications. Although, video coding and delivery schemes are available to the users, the quality of the picture is generally undesirable due to bad lighting conditions caused in part by the poor quality of available lighting apparatus. Conventional video conferencing apparatus have certain drawbacks regarding the transmitted picture quality. In particular, video conferencing apparatus very often transmits underexposed participants, which degrades the viewing experience and the quality of the conference. User-provided camera controls are generally insufficient for compensation of bad lighting conditions. In addition, it is undesirable to have numerous special lights at the physical conference location. These special lights may be uncomfortable to the participants due to additional heat given off by the lights. Other drawbacks include, the lack of sufficient electrical power to work the lights, and the inability to control the light parameters. Even if one was to try spot lighting the scene with physical lights, the trial-and-error process is highly inefficient and costly.
An approach to re-lighting has been developed as an extension of computer augmented reality (CAR). In such methods employing CAR, a set of static photographs taken in controlled light conditions or a video sequence are reconstructed three-dimensional geometrically. Several vision techniques are used for the scene reconstruction, such as camera calibration, mosaicing, computation of the epipolar geometry, which results in a polygonal reconstruction of the scene. Light exchanges among objects in the scene are computed and illumination textures coming from real and synthetic lights are modeled and reintroduced in the scene. While these CAR systems provide realistic effects of re-lighting, these CAR systems have certain drawbacks and undesirable features. These CAR systems are complex, non-real time based, and require entire geometrical reconstruction of the entire scheme being re-lighted. These CAR systems do not accommodate video conferencing applications, nor real-time applications. Also, the CAR systems do not dynamically adjust a light source illuminating an object in the scene when the object is moving in real-time. Thus, what is needed is a system and method for improving image and talking head sequences.